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Slow Sratch Disk Speed?
I don’t think this is the right forum for this but I could not find a forum that I thought this applied to.
So I installed a eSata card in my Mac Pro, I have a WD MyBook Journaled HFS+ 1 TB drive that I have been using as a scratch disk for a while through FW800. I put it in through the eSata connection and did AJA system test. And got avg 45mb/sec r/w speeds! Why so slow on such a fast connection? I did a recent test on FW800 and got similar speeds. I have another external HDD a 1TB LaCie d2Next Quadra, same thing I had FW800 in the past, only the speeds were for FW800 66/77 and then for eSata 90/91. A nice increase and what I would expect. Then I took an older 1TB Acomudata Drive(which is read as SAMSUNG by my mac) that had USB or eSata Ports, I had a few gigs backed up on it but never used it as a scratch disk because USB is slow and I kept it on FAT32 format for transfers between Mac/PC. So I plugged it in eSata and got 94/110 read/write speeds! on FAT32?? why is this so much faster? Is it simply because there is more free space on the older drive? The WD and the LaCie have about 100-200GB of free space, the Samsung has 800+GB free. However the WD has more free space then the LaCie and runs at FW400 speeds. I hope that makes sense; Why are these times all over the place?
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MacPro Octo Core Intel Xenon 2.8Ghz 6GB DDR2 Ram
FCP 7.0.2
-I highly recomend el Gato Turbo264HD- -
5 Replies
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[Christopher Targia] “So I installed a eSata card in my Mac Pro, I have a WD MyBook Journaled HFS+ 1 TB drive that I have been using as a scratch disk for a while through FW800. I put it in through the eSata connection and did AJA system test. And got avg 45mb/sec r/w speeds! Why so slow on such a fast connection?”
Speed is about what I would expect from that unit. It’s a single drive and the “My Book” series is not exactly optimized for video editing. They’re more for backup purposes. It’s also a single drive.
We have 16 drives in a single chassis that can run 750MB/s to 550MB/s depending on how they are configured. More drives striped together = more performance.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” featuring Sigourney Weaver coming soon.
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[Christopher Targia] “Journaled HFS+”
Journaling should only be used on the system drive, not on any media drives. There are software that can turn that off without reformatting the drive.I’m not a big fan of WD MyBook drives, some of them have a few bells and whistles that do auto backups and the like, these can slow things down, some are 5600RPM vs 7200RPM that are recommended for video. Plus the controller bridges in these drives are not the best, drives made by GRaid and OWC use highend bridges.
How full are the drives you are testing, Once you go over the 80% speed suffers, go over 90% and you really take a hit. If a drive has been written to and files deleted you can get a lot of fragmentation and that will affect speed.
You should be getting speeds in the 90s on a single eSata drive.
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geez, there is no way my company would pay for 16 drives and a chassis, would I be able to connect these external HDDs through RAID on my eSata Card? it has Silicon Image’s SATARaid™ RAID, so I should be able to do Raids, its this card
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/DAT%20Optic/ESATAPCIE8/or do all my HDDs need to be identical?
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MacPro Octo Core Intel Xenon 2.8Ghz 6GB DDR2 Ram
FCP 7.0.2
-I highly recomend el Gato Turbo264HD- -
How can I fix fragmentation? Windows has DeFragmenter, how can I fix that with a Mac? The First Aid Section in Disk Utility?
Also its good to know they should not be Journaled, what software can turn that off without re-partitioning?
Also I have two of those WD Drives, would putting those on a Raid 0 be worth it to pick up the speed?
Also is it possible to Raid all my Drives together or do they all need to be the same drive?
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MacPro Octo Core Intel Xenon 2.8Ghz 6GB DDR2 Ram
FCP 7.0.2
-I highly recomend el Gato Turbo264HD- -
I purchase pre-configured RAIDs from companies like Maxx Digital and Small Tree. Sonnett, Dulce and WiebeTech are other excellent names.
All have eSATA solutions.
As for the Journaling, the only way to remove that is to reformat your drive using Disc Utility. This will erase all your data though.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” featuring Sigourney Weaver coming soon.
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